The pregnant Ukrainian woman who took pictures last week when she was taken away after the Russian attack on a maternity hospital in Mariupol has died. Her baby has also died.
The photos, which made headlines internationally, showed the woman being rushed to an ambulance on a stretcher after the Russian airstrike on the hospital Wednesday. Emergency services drove her to another hospital, even closer to the front line. There, doctors tried to save her life. ‘Kill me now!’ she is said to have yelled when she realized she was in danger of losing her unborn child.
The woman’s pelvis was shattered, surgeon Timur Marin told AP news agency. Her hip was also torn. The doctors delivered the baby by cesarean section, but the baby showed “no signs of life,” Marin said. From then on, the medical team focused on saving the mother, but in vain. “More than thirty minutes of CPR on the mother produced no results,” says Marin. “Both died.”
No nameless grave
In the chaos after the Russian airstrike, medics didn’t have time to ask for the woman’s name, but her husband and father came by to take her body. At least someone came to pick her up, they said – at least that way she wouldn’t end up anonymously in one of the mass graves being dug in Mariupol for the rising death toll.
The attack caused outrage internationally. The Russians previously claimed that the maternity hospital in Mariupol had been taken over by Ukrainian extremists and used as a base, and that there were no patients or doctors in the building during the attack. The Russian UN ambassador and the Russian embassy called the images “fake news† The Klemlin is investigating what happened.
AP news agency, of which a photographer took the images, says AP journalists “recorded the attack, and saw the victims and the damage themselves.” “They captured video footage and photos of several bloodied, pregnant women fleeing the devastated maternity ward, of medics screaming, of crying children.”
to give birth
The shooting at the hospital and maternity ward in Mariupol has already killed at least three people, including a child. Seventeen others were injured. Another woman, blogger Mariana Vishegirskaya, survived the attack and has given birth to a daughter.
Russian ambassador Vasily Nebenzya claimed that Vishergirskaya’s photos were fake. The woman is said to be an actress and her injuries are “just very realistic makeup.” “It happened on March 9 in hospital number three in Mariupol,” Vishegirskaya herself told the AP, still in the same pajamas as on the day of the attack. “We were in the maternity ward when glass, frames, windows and walls flew apart. We don’t know how it happened. Some had time to cover themselves with something, others didn’t.”
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